


The Fundamental Things Apply

by poisonivory



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Defenders, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: When Matt comes back, Foggy kisses him.





	The Fundamental Things Apply

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [the RAICES fic fundraiser](http://pluckyredhead.tumblr.com/post/175376587139/raices-fic-fundraiser)! How many tropes can I fit into 3000 words? Let's find out!
> 
> Title is from "As Time Goes By." I'm ignoring the events of Luke Cage Season 2 here.

When Matt comes back, Foggy kisses him.

Matt wasn’t expecting it. He’d gone to Foggy’s first, once Matt’s mother - his mother! - gave him a clean bill of health. Foggy inherited all of Matt’s stuff, is the person best suited to fill out the paperwork required to resurrect him - and besides, he should be the first person Matt tells. Matt owes him that much.

It’s late when he rings Foggy’s doorbell. He can hear the approaching footsteps, a creaky yawn, a mumbled “This better be good.” The heartbeat he knows best in the world.

The door opens.

“Hi, Fog,” he says.

There’s a full minute of stunned silence. Then: “ _Matt?_ ” Foggy gasps. “How...how are...what...you’re…”

Matt opens his mouth to explain, but suddenly Foggy’s hands are on his cheeks and Foggy’s mouth is on his mouth and he’s awash in Foggy’s racing heartbeat. He stands poleaxed, too shocked to move. Too shocked to think. He might be almost as surprised as Foggy is right now.

Foggy is _kissing_ him.

Foggy jerks back, lets him go. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. He grabs Matt’s arms, pulls him inside. Lets him go, grabs him again, like he knows he shouldn’t touch but can’t help it. “You’re...sorry, I just...you’re _alive_.”

He’s crying.

He’s not the only one.

“It’s okay, Foggy,” Matt says, and makes the decision about touching on his own, folding Foggy into a hug he’s been longing for since well before his supposed death. “It’s all gonna be okay now.”

He can worry about the kiss later.

*

“Hey, sorry about...you know,” Foggy says the next morning over breakfast. Matt doesn’t have an apartment anymore, so he spent the night, face buried in a pillow that smelled of Foggy’s shampoo while Foggy insisted on taking the couch.

“ _Do_ I know?” Matt asks, lowering his spoon back into his cereal bowl. He’s pretty sure he does, though.

“The...kiss. The whole...kissing you...thing. That happened.” Even across the table, Matt can feel Foggy’s face flame.

“Oh.” Matt takes another bite to buy himself some time. “It’s not a big deal.” Foggy snorts. “Really! It’s...I mean, how were you _supposed_ to respond, you know? You thought I was dead.”

“Yeah.” Foggy’s breathing wobbles and then steadies. “I guess it’s not a big surprise to you that I...how I felt. How I feel. About you.”

Matt has to take another long bite to process that. He’s always known that Foggy is attracted to him, has known it from that first day in the dorm when Foggy was little more to him than sweaty palms and a racing heart and the faint clinging odor of weed. But Matt’s straight, and Foggy’s never pushed, so it’s always been easier to just ignore it.

That it might be more than attraction is something Matt’s never had the courage to examine. That it might have lasted through everything Matt’s put Foggy through rocks him to his core.

“...I suspected,” he says finally, taking refuge in ambiguity.

Foggy sighs. “Well, at least I’ve had a couple of years to get used to the embarrassment factor.”

“Foggy.” Matt frowns at him. Foggy doesn’t sound too upset, but still. “It’s not...it doesn’t matter, okay?”

Foggy lets out a startled laugh. “Wow, ouch.”

“No, I mean...I didn’t mean…” Matt fumbles, cringing. Foggy puts a steadying hand over his.

“I knew what you meant.” Foggy’s voice is warm. “And I get it.”

“You’re - you’re so important to me, Fog,” Matt says. “I know I haven’t always shown it well, but...you’re my best friend. Anything else...well…” How can he put it into words? What it means to have someone like Foggy Nelson care for him - what it means to know he’s not entirely a lost cause. “If it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me.”

Foggy tilts his head, and Matt can tell he’s being scrutinized. “It doesn’t bother me,” Foggy says finally, and his heart only gives the tiniest betraying flutter. “I’m just glad you’re back.”

“Me too,” Matt says, and it’s true. Anything else _doesn’t_ matter.

*

Except he can’t stop thinking about it, over the days and weeks that follow.

He resurrects himself. He fills out endless paperwork. He visits Karen, Claire, Jessica, Father Lantom. He explains the little he knows of what happened, over and over again.

And in between, he remembers in distracting flashes - Foggy’s warm hands on his cheeks. The softness of his mouth. The smell and the feel and the _taste_ of him.

He tries to forget.

*

“Sorry I couldn’t save your apartment,” Foggy says a week later. They’re sitting on the couch, eating Chinese food straight from the cartons. Foggy keeps trying and failing to steal shrimp from Matt’s lo mein.

“That’s okay. Someone else can deal with the repairs now,” Matt said. His apartment had gone on the market and been snatched up disturbingly soon after his supposed death. He needs to find a new place, but since he also doesn’t have a job at the moment, it’s going to have to wait. “I’m just sorry I’m putting you out for so long.”

“Pish tosh. It’s like being roommates again! Except with fewer drunken all-nighters and more back pain.” Foggy takes another stab at Matt’s lo mein and Matt fends him off with a chopstick. “Hell, my lease is up soon - maybe we should just look for a two bedroom.”

That startles Matt enough that he drops his guard and Foggy snags a shrimp. “What, really?”

Foggy shrugs a shoulder. “Sure. We don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it’s gonna take you a while to get back on your feet. I know _I’ll_ feel better leaving a metaphorical light on for you after a night of Daredeviling. Especially if you’re hurt.”

There’s a note of resignation in his voice at that. Matt had been bracing himself for the fight about going back to the suit until he realized that Foggy had given up trying to stop him. Now he realizes that it’s more than that - that Foggy is offering himself as Daredevil’s support staff. As Daredevil’s shelter.

Guilt and gratitude and affection and a strange, foreign nervousness mix in Matt’s belly and make him hand the rest of his lo mein to Foggy to do with it what he will. “Roomies, huh?”

“Well, why not?” Foggy asks. “We already know we’re great at it.” He nudges Matt playfully with his shoulder and doesn’t move all the way back to where he was before. He probably doesn’t even notice he’s still touching Matt.

Matt notices, though. Matt’s hyper-aware of the soft warm thigh pressed against his own, the brush of Foggy’s shirtsleeve against his own bare forearm, the way each inhale pushes Foggy that infinitesimal bit closer to Matt until the corresponding exhale takes him away again.

God.

“Besides,” Foggy goes on, “a two bedroom’ll get me off this godforsaken couch at night.”

The guilt surges ahead of the other emotions. “Oh, fuck, listen Fogy, I can - ”

“Nope!” Foggy holds up a hand to silence him. “You’re not taking the couch, you had a building fall on you.”

“I’m fine now.”

_“You had a building fall on you.”_

Matt has a feeling he’s going to be hearing that refrain for a while. “Share the bed, then.”

“What?”

Matt’s as surprised as Foggy sounds, but he can’t take it back now. “It’s big enough. Come on, I feel bad.”

Foggy cocks his head at him. “It wouldn’t make you...uncomfortable?”

Matt has lost count of the number of times he’s promised himself he’s going to stop lying to Foggy. Dozens in college. Hundreds since Foggy found out about Daredevil.

This is the first time he’s broken it since he came back, though.

“No, why would it?” he asks with a grin and a shrug.

There’s a long silence and for a minute he’s sure, _sure_ that Foggy’s going to call him on it.

“...Okay,” Foggy says. “Your loss, though. I still snore.”

“Yeah, I could still hear _that_ when the building was on top of me,” Matt teases, and laughs when Foggy does, but he can’t quite let himself relax.

What has he gotten himself into?

*

He knows Elektra’s alive out there somewhere. He has no memory of being moved from Midland Circle, but _someone_ pulled him out of the rubble so that the nuns could find him. And a week or two after he first regained consciousness, he woke up to find Elektra’s sai on his bedside table and the familiar scent of hyacinth and steel in the air. There was no note, but he didn’t need one.

He’ll always love Elektra. But something about Midland Circle - about choosing to stay with her, about feeling her come back to herself in the end - it helped him to let her go. He doesn’t have to live with the thousand questions and regrets from college, or her death. He can close that door.

And Karen - Karen sobbed on his shoulder for half an hour when he worked up the nerve to go see her, then punched him in the arm and told him to never do it again. But there wasn’t anything there but friendliness, and he thinks he’s glad. They could have been something really special, but the timing wasn’t right. _He_ wasn’t right. She’s still in his life, still safe, and that’s what matters.

Claire is another Could Have Been, another road Matt could have walked down if he’d been just a little bit smarter. But she made her choices, and Matt thinks they were the right ones. She’s happy now.

But Foggy…

Matt had never really considered Foggy, even knowing that Foggy was considering him. Matt’s straight, after all. He’s always been straight. He thinks. He’s pretty sure. He’s not sure what it means when the thought of Foggy’s hands on him makes his blood run hot. And the thought of his mouth…

Maybe he’s not that straight.

Matt has never deserved Foggy’s friendship. Foggy deserves someone who never lies to him, who never lets him down, who isn’t burning up inside with rage more often than not. And the same would be true if they were...something besides friends and (hopefully, soon, again) business partners. Foggy should be with someone gentle and steady and funny, like himself. Someone soft, like him. Someone who makes the world a little bit better instead of keeping it from getting a little bit worse. Matt shouldn’t even entertain the thought of letting his weight hang more heavily around Foggy’s neck.

But...he lost Karen because he was stupid, and Claire because he was stupid, and Elektra because maybe they were _both_ stupid, all the times he lost her.

Is he being stupid again now?

*

In bed, Foggy rolls over and throws an arm across Matt’s belly. Matt gives up on pretending to sleep and shifts to his side, facing Foggy. With the softest brush of a trembling forefinger, he traces Foggy’s eyebrows, his cheekbones, his nose. His lips.

It would have been nice, Matt thinks, to have figured this out ten years ago.

*

In the end, it isn’t anything momentous that changes things. It’s just Matt being unable to resist his own impulses, as usual.

It’s his first night back from Daredevil’s triumphant return to Hell’s Kitchen’s streets. Danny had insisted on accompanying him, despite Matt insisting that he didn’t need mothering between Foggy back home and his own actual blood mother in a convent ten blocks away. But it turned out to be a good thing he had backup when they ran into a sale of black market Judas bullets in a warehouse on 12th. Lucky for them, the bullets weren’t actually loaded into anything when Matt and Danny arrived on the scene.

“Nice to be doing Luke a favor,” Danny said with a grunt as he dodged the swing of a crowbar.

“We’re doing _everyone_ a favor,” Matt pointed out, and kicked three teeth out of the nearest opponent’s mouth.

Now he’s sitting on Foggy’s couch, vibrating with adrenalin while Foggy stands beside it and fusses over his injuries. They’re slight - he caught a crack to the cheekbone that broke the skin a little and is probably going to be a brilliant shiner by tomorrow - but he’s happy to let Foggy baby him. It just feels so _right_ : he’s Daredevil again, he’s keeping Hell’s Kitchen safe again, and he’s with Foggy again. Foggy, whose hands are warm as they press the butterfly bandage across the cut on his cheek, and who smells like nearly all of Matt’s good memories from the past ten years.

“First night out and he splits his head open,” Foggy mutters, touching Matt’s chin to gently tilt his head this way and that, as if he could have missed a gaping wound somewhere else.

“I didn’t split my head open,” Matt says, but he’s smiling even though it hurts his cheek a little, because Foggy’s not mad, he’s just griping for fun. Besides, Foggy thinks it’s funny when Matt responds to his hyperbole with pedantry, and Matt’s happy to play his role. More than happy.

“Yeah? Pro-tip, buddy: the red stuff is supposed to stay on the _inside_.” Foggy pokes Matt in the chest for emphasis.

“So _that’s_ what I’ve been doing wrong.”

“Oof.” Foggy stretches and arches his back; his vertebrae pop and fizz in Matt’s ears like a soda can. “It is too late for the Murdock Comedy Hour.” But his voice is still overwhelmingly fond, and his touch, when he bends again to swipe at the last of the dried blood on Matt’s cheek with an antiseptic wipe, is gentle.

It makes Matt reach up and close his fingers around Foggy’s wrist as he starts to pull away. “Hey,” he says. “Thank you for taking care of me.” He’s said it before, but he doesn’t think Foggy understood - he doesn’t think he understood _himself_ \- just what it meant to him. Foggy’s care.

Sure enough, “Yeah, yeah,” Foggy says, not unkindly, and pulls away again.

“No, Foggy - ” Matt says, and maybe he is more rattled by the blow to the head than he thought, because all that matters right now is to make Foggy _understand_ , and maybe that’s why it seems like a good idea to tug on Foggy’s wrist and push himself up and kiss Foggy firmly on the mouth.

“Uh,” Foggy says.

Matt lets go of Foggy’s wrist. Foggy straightens up.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, the happy buzz from a moment ago morphing into panic that he’s broken it, that he’s fucked it all up _again_. “I’m sorry, Fog, I just...you’re being so good to me and I just...I want you to know what it means to me that I...that you…”

“...Oh, _Matt_ ,” Foggy says, and it’s not exactly pity in his voice - Foggy’s better than that - but it’s close enough that Matt rankles. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” Matt asks, baffled.

“You’re my best friend,” Foggy says, smoothing Matt’s hair down. “I’m always going to take care of you. You don’t have to...sweeten the deal.”

It takes a minute to click, and then Matt’s furious. “You thought I was...what, repaying medical care with sexual favors?”

“Okay, calling a closed-mouthed kiss a sexual favor is just about the most choir boy you’ve ever been, and that’s saying something.”

“Foggy!” Matt doesn’t understand why Foggy’s being so flippant. “You really thought I would do that?”

“Not in so many words, but…!” Foggy shrugs, big and obvious in Matt’s senses. “What was I supposed to think? You’re loopy, you’re grateful, and you just kissed me. Why else would you do it besides as an ill-advised thank you?”

“Did the thought that I _wanted_ to never cross your mind?” Matt asks, indignant.

“You’re _straight!_ ” Foggy protests.

“Apparently not so much!” Matt retorts.

That sets Foggy back. “What?”

Unfortunately, Matt doesn’t really have a well-thought-out follow-up. “I...I don’t know,” he says, and feels how inadequate it is. “I’d never thought about it before. But when you kissed me…” He spreads his hands. “I can’t stop thinking about it, Fog.”

Foggy sits down on the couch next to him. Not close enough to touch. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but...are you sure you’re not just lonely? Or rebounding? I mean, the whole Elektra thing…”

“When you broke up with that girl Debbie in high school, did it make you want to make out with boys even though you weren’t interested in them before?” Matt asks.

“Well, no, but you never said anything about…”

“Is there a timeline?” Matt interrupts. “A right way to do this? Am I having a sexual identity crisis _wrong?_ ”

Foggy draws in a sharp breath. “No. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m being a dick.”

Matt sighs. “No, you’re not. I just…” He worries at a loose thread at the end of his sleeve. “I don’t know what I am, Foggy. I haven’t figured it out. All I know is that ever since you kissed me, all I want is for you to do it again.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Matt’s not sure if he’s about to be thrown out or just banished back to the couch. He can hear a clock ticking in a neighbor’s apartment. It sounds like a time bomb.

“If this is just, like, building-collapse PTSD or something and it turns out you don’t _actually_ want to kiss boys, or you want to kiss boys but not me, it’ll break my heart, Murdock,” Foggy says finally.

“I would never - ”

“But you _died_ , Matt,” Foggy says. His voice is ragged. “You died and that broke my heart worse than any semi-platonic sexual experimentation could. And I survived that.”

Something hopeful sparks to life in Matt’s chest. He takes a breath. Foggy likes it when he’s pedantic. “Technically, I didn’t actually die.”

He can hear the laugh Foggy bites back. “You know, if you want me to kiss you again, you’re going to have to be less of an asshole,” he says. He’s already leaning in.

“You like it when I’m an asshole,” Matt murmurs.

“Yeah, more fool me,” Foggy says, and kisses him.

Matt can’t believe he spent so much time obsessing over an impetuous, tear-salted kiss, when a kiss from Foggy in full possession of his faculties is _so much better_. Foggy puts his hand on Matt’s jaw to guide him and coaxes his lips apart sweetly; brushes his tongue against Matt’s and makes a low sound in the back of his throat that makes goosebumps stand up on Matt’s skin; makes Matt’s pulse beat a fevered rhythm in his ears. Matt isn’t just being kissed. Matt is being _kissed_.

When Foggy pulls away, Matt draws in a shaky breath. “Yeah, not straight,” he says.

“Well damn, I should have done that years ago, then,” Foggy says. He’s joking, but Matt can hear the relief in his voice, and it makes Matt tug him closer, to show him that he may not have much practice kissing other men, but he does know what he’s doing.

When they finally break apart, Matt can hear the garbage trucks outside on their early morning route, and Foggy’s cheeks are flushed beneath his fingers. “We should go to bed,” he says regretfully, and Foggy’s pulse spikes. “Not...just to sleep! Not that I don’t want...I mean, eventually, just not...I don’t…”

Foggy laughs. “Yes, thank you for the reminder that one of us sustained a head injury tonight. Come on, Murdock.” He stands up and offers Matt his hands to help him rise. “Time for some shut-eye.”

He starts to walk towards the bedroom, and Matt stops him by wrapping his arms around Foggy from behind and pushing his face into the sweet-smelling softness of Foggy’s hair. “Foggy,” he says, a little muffled. “Thank you.”

“For making out with you? You’re very welcome, buddy,” Foggy says with a chuckle.

Matt butts his head gently against Foggy’s. “You know what I mean.”

For welcoming Matt back. For offering him a home. For making him laugh. For being patient. For patching him up. For changing the kind of orange juice he buys because pulp makes Matt gag. For picking stupid debates over something innocuous when Matt needs to get out of own head. For letting Matt go at his own pace. For forgiving him, even after everything. And yes, for kissing him.

It’s a lot to bundle into two words, but he thinks Foggy will understand.

Sure enough, he feels Foggy relax in his arms. “Yeah,” he says, and unwinds one of Matt’s arms from around his midsection so that he can bring Matt’s hand up to his lips and kiss his knuckles. “Thank you for coming back to me.”

Matt closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of Foggy’s hair. “Always,” he says.

He’s told Foggy a lot of lies, but this one he’s going to do his damnedest to make the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](http://pluckyredhead.tumblr.com/)


End file.
